In image processing, the goal is to examine an image of an object in order to extract some useful information about that object. This is most often done by analyzing variations in the brightness value of spatially separated elements of the image and comparing them to one another or comparing them to a priori determined values.
It is not uncommon that there are brightness value variations within an image of an object that do not convey information about the object, but rather convey spurious information about the illumination system used to light the object or the imaging system used to optically form the image on the image sensor or about other aspects of the object's environment. When it is not possible to control the environment or the lighting or the optical system in such a way as to eliminate these artifacts, the system that analyzes the image to extract useful information must cope with these artifacts; that is the system must extract the salient features of the object from the image while ignoring spurious information from the artifacts.
In imaging systems with an in-line coaxial illumination device are well known in the art and were first widely used in biological microscopes. In general, in-line coaxial illumination devices introduce a light source either between the image plane and the lens, or within the lens itself between the optical elements. The elements of the lens between the light source and the object may be used to focus or collimate the light and cause the light to impinge the object along a complimentary path to the image-forming rays. This method can result in increased contrast of the image of the object and also in more compact assemblies as additional space between the lens and the object is not required to introduce the illumination.
The problem with imaging systems such as these is that a portion of the illumination may be reflected by the optical elements between the illumination source and the object in a direction back toward the image plane where the illumination may register as an image artifact. Traditionally, the response to this has been to use careful optical design practices, including baffling and antireflection coatings, to minimize the artifacts from this type of lighting.